


A Thing of Beauty

by innerslytherin



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-15
Updated: 2010-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 08:04:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innerslytherin/pseuds/innerslytherin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is surprised by what he finds beautiful at the last battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thing of Beauty

**Author's Note:**

> Post-war, written after HBP

Harry has not had much beauty in his life. When the final battle is over, Voldemort defeated, he hopes he can begin to make up for it. When the ashes are raining down on them, Harry thinks they are beautiful. Watching Ron and Hermione clasp hands and smile is beautiful. The way Dean Thomas smoothes Parvati Patil's hair from her face and kisses her is beautiful.

And somehow the sight of a shabby, tired werewolf cradling a Death Eater in his lap, weeping-even this is beautiful. All the same, Harry knows he can't leave them free. He goes over, ready to make the arrests, and is shocked when he sees who it is.

"Remus?" he gasps.

The ragged head doesn't lift. Instead he bends low and presses his lips to the Death Eater's bloody, obscured face. Harry wonders if he is mourning for some woman he once knew, or perhaps even Peter.

He is shocked when Remus sits up and smoothes back the pitch-black hair of Severus Snape. Harry's hand tightens reflexively on his wand. "Step away from him, Remus," he snarls. At last, the final revenge denied him.

Remus still doesn't look up. "I will not, Harry," he says, a steel resolve in his hoarse voice.

"I swore I would kill him!"

"Well, you're too late," Remus murmurs thickly. "Lucius Malfoy did that for you." His face contorts with grief and rage and despair, all of which Harry ignores.

"Good." His voice is savage. "The traitor betrayed."

He was never a traitor, Harry." Remus' voice is dead. "He followed Albus' orders completely."

"He killed him!"

"Those were his orders." Remus gathers Snape's sprawled body in his arms and stands. His eyes look old, so old, as he gazes at Harry. "His cover with Voldemort was then complete. But his information was what led us to the Horcruxes, and his death is what saved my life."

Remus takes a long and shuddering breath, clutching Severus' body like a lover. "And now I will give him a place of honour, and I will mourn him as he deserves."

And that, Harry decides in the end, is also a beautiful thing.


End file.
